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Cisco XDR vs IBM Security QRadar comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 19, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco XDR
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
14th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Security QRadar
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
216
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (7th), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (4th), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (17th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (4th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Extended Detection and Response (XDR) category, the mindshare of Cisco XDR is 2.0%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Security QRadar is 3.2%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Extended Detection and Response (XDR) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM Security QRadar3.2%
Cisco XDR2.0%
Other94.8%
Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
 

Featured Reviews

Joseph Houghes - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Architect at Pure Storage
flexible reporting and analytics boost data-driven security responses
The feature I appreciate the most about Cisco XDR is the flexibility for a user to be able to create their own reporting and dashboards. I would say I got to stop beta testing myself. I am testing what can be customized the most with it. Being able to ingest all the analytics and make it something that's either meaningful to them or to their own leadership is a big plus. It's not just what the product is at launch; you have the ability to customize and make it useful to your business to actually get real, purposeful information out of just a swamp of data. The features of Cisco XDR have actually benefited the organization significantly by allowing us to do the outputs of specific data and even filtered subsets of the data. We can do the same reporting but only deliver in either reports or dashboards the information about the systems that a specific team is responsible for, or the larger teams that multiple departments or IT silos roll up into. We're basically able to just modify the filters and have the same reports in the same dashboards where it's all the same; 99% of the work is the same.
HarshBhardiya - PeerSpot reviewer
SOC Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
Have managed daily asset and alert monitoring effectively but have encountered limitations with manual processes and interface usability
It's still very manual and doesn't work on its own. It's still in an early stage and not on par where we can consider it a really successful detection system. The accuracy is not there. The UI could be better when compared to Sentinels where we can use flags and tagging. It could be much more user-friendly. IBM Security QRadar has all features and is fully competitive with other SIEM tools, but when it comes to user-friendliness, a new user takes time to get used to it. More intuitive, user-friendly interfaces and more helpful documentation would be beneficial. The query searching and data fetching could be faster. In large to very large organizations with around 5,000 or 6,000 assets or beyond, even with proper configurations and RAM and hardware backing up, the query is fairly slow.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Cisco XDR is built primarily for enterprise endpoint security, integrated onto endpoints with logs integrated into SIEM, and it is used for security investigations, malware impact investigation, and tracking particular security incidents through integration of different logs, where endpoint logs are very important, providing detail about processes run by potential malware and any call-outs made to command and control."
"Cisco XDR offers threat intelligence and links with the Firewall."
"My advice for other organizations considering Cisco XDR is that it offers proactive security measures that are really very helpful."
"The feature I appreciate the most about Cisco XDR is the reliability."
"One of my favorite features of Cisco XDR is the automation tool, which saves a lot of time because we can craft these automations and workflows."
"One of my favorite features of Cisco XDR is the automation tool, which saves a lot of time because we can craft these automations and workflows."
"The features of Cisco XDR benefit my company since time is money. When outages happen and when a customer can't reach the internet, they get agitated. Therefore, the quicker we can mitigate an issue, our customers get happier in a quicker fashion."
"The feature I appreciate the most about Cisco XDR is the flexibility for a user to be able to create their own reporting and dashboards, ingest all the analytics, and make it something meaningful to their business to actually get real, purposeful information out of just a swamp of data."
"In addition to using this solution for our security operations center, we are using it for our other customers."
"The tool helps with infrastructure, application, and network monitoring."
"The feature that I have found most valuable is its artificial intelligence component, Watson. Its contribution is pretty good from a machine-learning artificial intelligence perspective. This compliments the orchestration automation component, as well."
"I have found IBM QRadar to be stable."
"The solution is reliable."
"The ability to transition from microscopic to macroscopic view, instantly, is very good."
"It has a lot of good correlation rules. From a customer's point of view, it is one of the best solutions because you don't need to create correlation rules from scratch. You just review them and customize them as you want."
"It does good correlation for events. It does good general analysis, and it has good apps as well."
 

Cons

"One area that needs improvement is the limited visibility due to the licensing structure. For more visibility, customers need the advantage or premier licensing, which involves additional costs."
"Improvements in Cisco XDR revolve around performance."
"If we have a list of domains we need to block, such as 4,000 domains, I can only block 100 domains at a time because if I put in more than 100 domains, I hit that 2,000 character max and can't continue with an investigation. Being able to put in all 4,000 domains, without a character limit or observable limit, would make doing those case books a whole lot easier and blocking those domains a whole lot easier too."
"Cisco XDR can be improved by addressing the upfront cost."
"They need to provide better pricing and bundle XDR licenses with products like Meraki solutions or Firepower Threat Defense."
"My only complaint about Cisco XDR is related to licensing, which is complicated."
"I would say I got to stop beta testing myself."
"Cisco XDR can be improved by addressing the upfront cost. Everything matters for us since we're small, mom and pop, so every dollar counts."
"The only challenge is that IBM has been a closed enterprise. It should be more open to integrating with other providers at an enterprise level. We're a bank and the core banking system integration is not way straightforward and there is no integration between IBM and these products. If IBM could open up and provide a way of integrating it seamlessly, without charging more for it, that would make a big difference."
"The Indian tech support is not helpful."
"The solution is highly used here in Pakistan and in many sectors, they could improve it by having more SIEM connectors."
"QRadar needs a lot of fine tuning"
"Before we didn't have any security issues but recently a few of the user emails were hacked. We had to actually recreate their emails for them."
"The technical support is poor. Mostly because when I open a PMR for IBM, I am stuck with Level 1 staff. As an engineer, nothing that I am bringing them does not require Level 2 or Level 3 support."
"For future updates, I'd like to see more advanced threat intelligence features integrated with AI. This would help with analyzing traffic patterns and improving protection. QRadar currently doesn't integrate with AI for threat analysis. However, AI could enhance its capabilities by learning traffic patterns and automatically blocking or quarantining suspicious traffic. This would be especially useful when administrators are not actively monitoring. AI could help by analyzing incoming and outgoing traffic and adjusting policies accordingly."
"The product can be a bit complex."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing of Cisco XDR is a bit complicated. The cost can depend on what it is, and the process can be a little complicated."
"The price of this solution is a little bit expensive, so if it were cheaper then it would help."
"The tool is priced in a competitive manner. The tool's price is dependent on the installation and the product size, but it is competitive in the marketplace."
"The price of this product is high."
"We pay approximately $40,000 to use the solution annually. This solution is a lot less expensive than Splunk."
"found other solutions, with more features at the same cost or less. You don’t have to leave the Gartner Magic Quadrant to beat their price."
"QRadar's price is reasonable compared to LogRhythm."
"There is a license required for this solution. There are some limitations depending on what license you purchase."
"The solution comes with a high price tag, while some of the competitors provide identical functionality in their offerings at no extra cost."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Extended Detection and Response (XDR) solutions are best for your needs.
879,310 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

VS
Manager, Enterprise Risk Consulting at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Jun 28, 2015
Qradar vs. ArcSight
Continuing with the SIEM posts we have done at Infosecnirvana, this post is a Head to head comparison of the two Industry leading SIEM products in the market – HP ArcSight and IBM QRadar Both the products have consistently been in the Gartner Leaders Quadrant. Both HP and IBM took over niche SIEM…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
University
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business89
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise105
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco XDR?
My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing has been intriguing. I used to work for a Cisco partner, and I still have friends there with whom I discuss comparisons regarding some hardwar...
What needs improvement with Cisco XDR?
To improve Cisco XDR, I can't think of anything super meaningful because a couple of features I'm interested in are actually ones that integrate with Duo, but that's not widely used. I'm fine with ...
What is your primary use case for Cisco XDR?
My primary use case for Cisco XDR is log review from devices, and then doing analytics for quicker responses in the future to security incidents.
What are the biggest differences between Securonix UEBA, Exabeam, and IBM QRadar?
It mostly depends on your use-cases and environment. Exabeam and Securonix have a stronger UEBA feature set, friendlier GUI and are not licensed based on capacity (amount of logs and information in...
What SOC product do you recommend?
For tools I’d recommend: -SIEM- LogRhythm -SOAR- Palo Alto XSOAR Doing commercial w/o both (or at least an XDR) is asking to miss details that are critical, and ending up a statistic. Also, rememb...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Security QRadar?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is great compared to the other vendor.
 

Also Known As

No data available
IBM QRadar, QRadar SIEM, QRadar UBA, QRadar on Cloud, IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Clients across multiple industries, such as energy, financial, retail, healthcare, government, communications, and education use QRadar.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco XDR vs. IBM Security QRadar and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,310 professionals have used our research since 2012.